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Coworker:: I believe in traditional marriage. Same sex marriage is pointless. ….and a sin.

Me: lotsa "sin" is not illegal. How do you account for 80 years of legal slavery in this country?

Him: You mean slavery is somehow like gay marriage?

Me: I mean the Constitution was created in the late 1780s, and slavery wasn't outlawed until 1868.

Him: Totally different. And slavery wasnt a sin.

Me: What do you mean "traditional" marriage?

Him: man and wife.

Me: Well- how do you define that as "traditional"? plenty of people have done other things.

Him: Biblical, man and woman cleaving to each other. That kind of tradition.

Me: Biblical… hmmmm In the Bible I know – man & wife, but also man, his wife and her slaves, man, wife and his concubines, man and his wives, male rapist and his victim – all recognized forms of marriages. Further- man/wife required wife to be virgin at the time of marriage, or the man could reject her and annul the marriage. And no divorce, or really really difficult to divorce.

HIm (trying to interrupt but finally waiting: That's all just stupid. No one believes anything but man and wife is traditional.

Me: oh- so you just re-write history when history is "stupid". Ok. But don't tell me that you want Biblical marriage, but then deny the Bible. Don't tell me you want "tradition" and then make it up. That's fine for you and your wife – you are two consenting adults, you can believe and do whatever you want. But why do your delusions have to be the law for everyone else?

HIm: I'm not married.

Me: oh, well – then it's fine for you to believe whatever you want, but your delusions don't get to be the law for the rest of us. I thought you were marreid- I thought I've heard you talking about your wife.

HIm: Ex-wife. ANd they aren't delusions – it's what normal people believe.

Eisenhower and Khrushchev were working to see if they could come up with a way to eliminate nuclear weapons. Before there was an arms race and back when there were only two countries with nuclear weapons.

Something occured that stopped the negotiations cold. What was it? Bonus question, name the key person.

I began calling myself a "progressive" around the turn of the century. Before that, I was simply a "Leftist." I was alway uncomfortable with the term "progressive" because it seemed so squishy. Well, I was right to be uneasy about this nominal change. John Stauber over at counterpunch has written a article titled The Progressive Movement is a PR Front for Rich Democrats. The thesis of his article is summed up in two paragraphs:

The self-labeled Progressive Movement that has arisen over the past decade is primarily one big propaganda campaign serving the political interests of the the Democratic Party’s richest one-percent who created it. The funders and owners of the Progressive Movement get richer and richer off Wall Street and the corporate system. But they happen to be Democrats, cultural and social liberals who can’t stomach Republican policies, and so after bruising electoral defeats a decade ago they decided to buy a movement, one just like the Republicans, a copy.

The Progressive Movement that exists today is their success story. The Democratic elite created a mirror image of the type of astroturf front groups and think tanks long ago invented, funded and promoted by the Reaganites and the Koch brothers. The liberal elite own the Progressive Movement. Organizing for Action, the “non-partisan” slush fund to train the new leaders of the Progressive Movement is just the latest big money ploy to consolidate their control and keep the feed flowing into the trough.

If you call yourself a "progressive," as I have, and feel the slightest bit offended by the above, I urge you to go over and read the entire article. He makes an excellent argument.

I've always preferred liberal, ever since Shrub the first browbeat Michael Dukakis with it and the "card-carrying member" of the ACLU nonsense. I was hoping for a full-throated defense of what the word meant, but since that has never come, it has been toxified and can no longer be used. I never cottoned to "progressive", but since it's the marketing term du jour, it works.

As for the big money does what it can to win elections, well duh. Until we get money out of politics, the coproratists will win. I don't see that the left has developed a counter to Heritage, Cato, etc., as there is no money in that. We've developed messaging, not ideology. Still, you can't say things aren't better than they might have been under Republican hegemony, and FWIW, while co-opted to win elections, the "war on women" messaging does reflect the grass roots. The defund Planned Parenthood movement has created a bottom up swelling of the liberal ranks devoted to the Liberal notion that government assistance to help make the less fortunate better able to improve their lives helps improve society as a whole.

The news from the "sacrifice zone" in Garfield County is now even worse. Benzene is a known carcinogen. And looks as if they need a consultant who understands that water flows downhill. I can't imagine that this contamination won't reach Parachute Creek and ultimately the Colorado River, both water sources for communities downstream.